This Miliband is an odd bird

Last updated at 22:00 05 February 2007

While it would be unfair to call David Miliband a turkey, this Environment Secretary is an odd bird: angular to the brink of weird-pointy, so urban and shiny you doubt he has ever savoured the whiff of fresh-laid cowpat squelched beneath his heel.

Has he ever sat in the back of a hard-sprung Land Rover, bouncing down an rural track? Has he ever faced the ordeal of a slice of farm wife's cake, one of those terrifying mountains of leaden Victoria sponge that confront you like Hannibal's Alps? From his slender girth, I'd say not.

And has Mr Miliband ever supervised the loading of lorries taking suspect carcasses to a safe location? Sleek, feline Mr Miliband was full of know-all-ish claims about such transportation procedures yesterday.

Updating the House on the bird 'flu outbreak, he insisted that the dead turkeys in East Anglia were being "transported under escort in sealed, leak-proof lorries to a plant in Staffordshire". (That's Staffordshire as in, "the other side of England". Could they not find anywhere closer?)

Mr Miliband disclosed that when the carcasses reach Staffordshire the treatment involves "crushing and grinding, followed by heat treatment in a sealed vessel to reduce the moisture content and to kill micro-organisms".

Some MPs pulled faces, for it was not that long since lunch. A Government Whip, listening to the destruction process, assumed an expression of almost professional interest.

It certainly all sounded jolly impressive. That Miliband, eh, he's on top of the detail! But is he?

Later, under questioning, the "sealed" bit of his answer about the lorries started to sound less comprehensive. It turned out that Mr Miliband was not talking about vehicles with locked metal cargo bays, but wagons secured by knotted canopies. Mr Miliband, irked by the pernickety questions, offered to furnish the House with a picture of the type of knot. By now, however, MPs seemed to be a little less impressed by the youth.

I would have preferred to have heard the Statement made by Ben Bradshaw. He is the minister with long-running responsibility for bird 'flu. He, I suspect, would have been better informed. He might also have sounded less geeky - and less blustery - than his nominal boss.

Mr Miliband at first did not call it bird 'flu but "avian influenza". Correct, yes. Accessible, less so. His statement was poorly written, ungrammatical with weak spelling. You say: "Oh, so what?" Well, is he interested in precision or not?

His speech was loaded by jargon about "pathogenicity" and "stakeholders" and epidemiological reports", not to mention feeble boasts about all the telephone conferencing and text messaging and websites involved in the spread of information. The longer he went on, the more it sounded like a spiel from "Call My Bluff".

It is only a small point, I know, but he also spoke about the "three kilometre" protection zone and the "10 kilometre" surveillance zone around infected farms. Kilometres? Do we not use "miles" in this country? Why complicate matters? Speak the language of your adult electorate, man.

We do not want a Secretary of State to be too easily impressed by the new and fashionable, because such a Secretary of State may not be prepared to be his own man.

There have been some excitable claims recently that Mr Miliband is a future Prime Minister. If you gave me a tenner and sent me to one of Mrs Jowell's new gambling emporia I would be more tempted to gamble it on Alan Johnson or Hazel Blears or even Jack Straw becoming PM. Mr Straw was up taking Questions on various matters yesterday. He is a classy, interesting act.

To close, a peach from Whitehall. A friend was on the telephone to the press office at the Education Department yesterday teatime. "Now then," says the male official to my colleague. "My geography isn't too good. Bristol. Is that in the South East?"

The same Whitehall is supervising the fight against bird 'flu. Bought your Tamiflu yet?